Slashdot Mirror
Upcoming Changes To 'Ask Slashdot'
We're pleased to announce that changes are coming to the Ask Slashdot section. Ask Slashdot is a place to get your technical questions answered, show off your big brain by helping others, debate products and practices, and occasionally talk directly to companies about their offerings. Over the years, we've posted more than 7700 questions, on everything from workplace relations to home networking to evading censorship from unfriendly regimes. Starting tomorrow, you'll see that some Ask Slashdot questions have their own sponsors; the sponsors don't pick the questions, but experts from each sponsor will stick around for the discussion. Next up: we're making it easier for you to submit questions. Our goal is to make Ask Slashdot your "go-to" place for answers to your pressing nerd questions. So please post your questions, put on your answering hats, and come along for the ride.
I work for a public relations company that deals with large clients (can't say who) and I welcome this change. It should bring more interesting discussions to Slashdot. Those "omg astroturfer" guys heads are going to implode. :)
I feel silly for getting concerned when that pulse stuff started showing up in the sidebar. Clearly things are heading in a good direction :)
For the first question I’d like to know how my organization can best leverage Oracle’s EJB technology to obtain the rapid and simplified development of distributed, transactional, secure and portable applications that we are looking for in our growing business.
.... Will it blend?
Buanzo Consulting - 15 Years of GNU/Linux experience, for you.
Slashdot, are you saying that you are trying to emulate the functions of StackOverflow?
What's the deal with the sponsors? Are you saying Oracle (for example) is going to have some expert answer common Java questions in a slashvertisement/tech support type thing?
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
They sent a war declaration it arrived later than the bombing, it was intended to arrive at approximately the same time as the attack.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
I've been here for a long time. It used to be that I would very rarely if ever read comments submitted by other Slashdotters as I was far more interested in TFA. But as time has gone on I find I am more interested in what others here have to say. Everybody has the same news stories now and it is the insights and comments from the people in this community that are the real value.
Not certain how you're planning to define "sponsors", but if you're planning to accept money from people who would like to mine this community for information I would caution you to tread carefully. You may be trying this on the wrong group of people...
Hope it boots!
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
And 70 years later we have sponsors on Slashdot. Did we really win the war? Did we?
Sponsors? What the heck? I come to slashdot to get answers not marketing BS. Now you are going to give some company "authority?" I guess I can say goodbye to getting answers on slashdot. This is not a fricken help site, why are you trying to change that? I come here to be informed about Stuff that matters not whatever marketing wants to shove down my throat. We already have a lot of non-nerdy types here, so what you want to do is water that down and become more common denominator? I guess I'll be pulling out my copy of slashcode soon.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Right now any company can make an account and answer questions, how will the new change be different besides the financial support to slashdot. Will they be allowed moderation points? Say in which comments float to the top? Actually get to pose the questions (how awesome is adobe reader on a scale from 9-10) I would love to have specifics on this agreement as Slashdot has become a wonderful place for me to come and see unbiased information from the technical community and I would hate to see bias creep into the discussion because of this.
I was ready to hide all Ask Slashdot posts anyway because they provide very little value (mostly because the questions are not that interesting to me). Now I'm more motivated to do that...
Go to Options -> Exclusions and you can hide all Ask Slashdot posts.
I mostly visit slashdot as an avenue for tech/science/nerd news, and an occasional giggle at flame wars. The growing trend of 'Ask Slashdot' posts I've never had a problem with; what is a problem is the growing rate of redundancy/frequency in question posts versus actual news, no one moderating the train wreck of flame wars and the shear lack of aptitude from the question poser in terms of topic worth.
'Ask Slashdot' used to be an infrequent-but-jolt-of-freshness into daily reading, now it's just being used WAY to often with poor content abandonment IMHO. I see more posts saying "Didn't we just discuss this last week?" followed by a link to a slashdot URL showing the evidence.
All cynicism aside, I'm not for it and I'm sure as hell hoping the next administrative post to slashdot isn't "We're changing our slogan to 'Slashdot: Regurgitated Tech Commentary and Questions. No News. Stuff that doesn't matter".
I really miss Taco.... Who thought this was a good idea?
"The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein," - Joe Theisman
He saw the writing on the wall and got out while the getting was good
moox. for a new generation.
So the moral of the story, the story being Pearl Harbour, is don't trust FedEx?
... Sponsored by Microsoft ...
Well OK, perhaps even Microsoft know better than to turn up here for that one ;)
It was 70 years ago today that Japan, without declaring war prior, attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
I'm sorry, we can't accept that answer. Please state your question in the form of a question.
Another way of saying "we're going to have even more Slashvertisments in the future, straight from the companies who can't possibly do any wrong."
I can see the line-up already:
- Is Carrier IQ software capable of tracking my usage? Answer by the creator of Carrier IQ and an Apple representative
- what's the best database to use for a personal website? Answer by a MySQL rep from Oracle
- what are the benefits of a Slashdot subscription? Answer by some BoingBoing reject editor
Fuck you, Soulskill. Money grubbing twat.
They weren't hard to identify anyways, but an official label on those accounts would help.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I'm looking for a good ad-blocker, one that specifically filters technology advertising on message board sites. Difficulty: Must work with Chrome, IE 9 and Opera.
Any suggestions?
Clarification: Any suggestions that do not involve switching my OS.
When are you guys going to fix the extremely broken, gamed, and unworking moderation system?
Let's face it, Slashdot moderation has severe holes in it, as analyzed over here. There are exploits with a desperate need for fixes - people with multiple accounts made solely to harvest mod points via the random lottery, the ability to go back weeks into a commenter's history to stage assault raids on their karma, and of course a moderation system that encourages people who play by the rules NOT to moderate because they're then forbidden to comment anywhere in the thread.
well, the network expert can tell you that your workplace relations problems are cause by the lack of a quality crossbar in the switching fabric. For 10000$ he can sell you a switch with a crossbar in the fabric that can handle your n^2 communications link that are the source of your workplace relation problems.
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
This is opening the gate to the PR people from the major "tech" companies, who - which is a well-known fact - are not nerds. Also, the "mattering" level of the "Ask Slashdot" discussions will decrease. Aggregate judgment: this leads /. away from its self-professed core competence of "News for nerds, stuff that matters".
Bad idea, /. !!
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Will this important function, having geek words in articles appear on Google News and then submitting them over to Slashdot, be kept intact?
Gently reply
What I worry about is how much manipulation these sponsors will demand.
About a year ago, Digg.com did the same and re worked the site.
The sponsors started to control content and people noticed.
Within 4 months, most users left for another site.
Now, Digg is a shadow of its former self and is spammed regularly.
Comments are few and hollow a-la "I agree" or "me too".
Content is still controlled to this day.
IOW: Digg is now a Web 2.0 billboard.
I don't want a repeat.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
"you'll see that some Ask Slashdot questions have their own sponsors; the sponsors don't pick the questions, but experts from each sponsor will stick around for the discussion"
So, this could become a free version of Experts Exchange? I don't know if this is a good thing or not. If the quality of answers is high, specifically if the sponsors are tech companies, then this is good for users. However, Experts Exchange is pay for a reason, and that's to ensure very high quality. So if the quality is low, this will just become the geek version of Yahoo Answers.
I think Slashdot should possibly test an alternate Karma system just for answers. Just because someone is +5 Funny doesn't make them an expert.
I8-D
Is this new functionality going to be available as a part of slashcode?
Meta posts worry me. I'm always afraid we might manage to slashdot slashdot.
My webcomic
Ads are not a terrible thing. Sometimes they are even of value. I always look at the ads in Circuit Cellar magazine, CycleWorld, Motorcyclist, Rider, and other magazines that I read.
The key to have ads that people do not want to block.
No animation or sound and keep them relatively small and I will read them.
If they blink or move then ad blocker goes into full force.
Slashdot actually has a really good community but a tough one to force ads on. The problem would be getting people to white list Slashdot.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You can tell an Apple astroturfer from an Apple fanboy? I can't.
I've been reading slashdot for over a decade. I haven't once gotten a post published. I've posted good and relevant stories only to see them reject without an explanation ( hint to admins: this really pisses people off and makes it harder to get volunteers ).
I'm skeptical of how useful "ask slashdot" is for that reason. I never bothered to try it out. Why should I take the time to type out a worthy technical question if I don't even know if it will be published?
The interface takes some getting used to, but I have found the current best place for technical questions is stackoverlow.com.
It is like Usenet, but without the cranky people with no lives looking to slam people.
I've learned a lot there.
We didn't declare war, but we did say: "We are moving a massive army into the region and we're going to attack you". Ethically, it's not like we did a sneak attack.
People reveal their shallow understand of history when they condemn the bombing of Hiroshima.
Okay, time to cash in some of my karma.
1. Who are you "PerlJedi (2406408) who works for Slashdot" and what is your expertise since you are a brand new hire?
2. I am noticing the quotes on "Expert". Either the people really will be experts, or else they'll be Astroturfing "Experts" in quotes. That is, unless your grammar just sux and you put gratuitous quotes which then accidentally totally flipped your meaning.
3. I bet no one cross-referenced which of these ... "Experts" are currently also Slashdot users - I bet new ones in that ominous 2400000 range. As users they get Mod points? Who will be watching what they do with those?
4. Companies don't care about "being made a fool of" with the top 25% if the Astroturfing raises sales with the newer 75% userbase. Sure, some companies will provide a legit expert, but we're watching like a hawk. Slashdot has seen our comments on editorial quality. We've made fools of you for years. Not like it really helped. (Probably some, far from enough.)
Bonus: Since y'all want to make changes, get a grip and allow editing of posts. Do like other forums do and tag it "this post was modified ...". Then we won't get 7 bad entries harping on spelling that totally derails the conversation. Put a time limit on it like 72 hours.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Does anybody else remember xxx.vendor.slashdot.org? For those that don't, it was a place where, eg, AMD, could post slashvertisements directly without waiting for a janitor to approve it.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
1. Who are you "PerlJedi (2406408) who works for Slashdot" and what is your expertise since you are a brand new hire?
You are right, I haven't worked here very long. I am just a software engineer fortunate enough to have landed what I think of as my dream job. I have been a slashdot reader for much, much longer than I have worked here though. I created this account after I started here to use as my "official" slashdot account.
I love slashdot. I love being a geek. I am fortunate enough to work for a website that I enjoy, and I am hoping to use my position here to keep slashdot as a great website for geeks and geek culture. So I haven't been working here from the begining when it was just Rob and his buddies, but I'm here now, and I'm doing my best to keep slashdot going as a fun and interesting site for news and geek culture.
2. I am noticing the quotes on "Expert". Either the people really will be experts, or else they'll be Astroturfing "Experts" in quotes. That is, unless your grammar just sux and you put gratuitous quotes which then accidentally totally flipped your meaning
I put quotes on expert because these will be people that the sponsor considers experts, which does not necissarily mean that I, or slashdot, would call them experts.
3. I bet no one cross-referenced which of these ... "Experts" are currently also Slashdot users - I bet new ones in that ominous 2400000 range. As users they get Mod points? Who will be watching what they do with those?
You are correct, there is nothing to stop the sponsor from having employee's go out and create non-official slashdot accounts to moderate things the way they want them to be moderated. Of course there is nothing to stop them from doing that anyway, even if they aren't sponsoring a question.
4. Companies don't care about "being made a fool of" with the top 25% if the Astroturfing raises sales with the newer 75% userbase. Sure, some companies will provide a legit expert, but we're watching like a hawk. Slashdot has seen our comments on editorial quality. We've made fools of you for years. Not like it really helped. (Probably some, far from enough.)
Really? You don't think that companies care whether or not they look foolish in the public eye?
In checking your other posts, I realize when you said "Apple turfers" you may have meant "anti Apple turfers", not "Apple astroturfers".
If that's the case, sorry I let you have both barrels because you mispoke or I misunderstood.
Still, group labeling of accounts is pretty offensive. You can block any user. /. conversations as much as I did in the nineties, so I've only had to block on a few occasions.
I guess I don't participate in
I have asked this question before. For some reason, I have never heard anything back. I am an aspiring light artist and am looking for very low lower laser diodes for my work (under 1 mw). Perhaps I can get some response here?
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
To be fair, the US didn't declare war against Japan before trying to prevent supplies of oil and steel from reaching your shores or supporting mercenaries in China against the Japanese invasion there. Anyone who thought the Japanese would just sit around without going to war over that wasn't paying much attention.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
The last time we declared war was World War II. How many bombs have we dropped since then?
How was Slashdot Lost?
They needs to way intain PR, who klilled the storeis becauys theiy coludsnt frhgit back!
It was on the news this morning, a community in awe, at how bad a change was contemplated!
No Babbies were harmed in this post.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The free version of Experts Exchange is Stack Exchange. Stack Overflow is just the tip (or base) of the iceberg.
There are ways of detecting ad-blockers in use. Use one of them to detect when people are blocking your ad, and present a message saying something "please whitelist Slashdot, we need the revenue." Allow the user to dismiss the box and remember their dismissal. Make it a small message; if it's anything like the ads for Wikipedia's fundraising drives, it'll be blocked en masse and forgotten.
My guess is that if the ads are not obnoxious (which is admittedly another thing that needs work... we hate Flash ads), a lot of people will follow through and whitelist. If there's a revenue problem, that will at least help in the short term.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
The problem I have with the "experts" is that they are generally contract based marketing spokespersons, whose main purpose is to deliver a crafted message to their targeted audience - a one way street. The problem with the "Experts" is that they don't have managerial status, don't sit in on the important meetings, and are just a part of the marketing arm.
:)
I think what he is trying to get at here is that if Slashdot is going to allow sponsored Ask Slashdot articles, Slashdot needs to take this seriously and vet who is being sent in as an expert. You wouldn't send a marketroid to DEF CON, no, you send someone who is knowledgeable about the topic they're talking about and directly involved in what's going on.
The biggest problem I have with these "Experts" and "Community Liasons" is that they generally get an email from the marketing department outlining what is supposed to be said, and then they hit twitter, a couple of email lists and a cross section of the relevant press. They have no input on the company, no idea what future direction they're headed, and when concerns are lodged, they have to ignore them, or pass them along to their superiors without any expectation on hearing back from them.
Marketing departments tend to look on their contract "Experts" as a sort of living, breathing digital billboard. $1200 a month buys you someone who will interact with customers on a superficial level and provide filtered feedback from them, but since they're an arm of a marketing department, they aren't really providing the service the customers expect - a two way dialog. The end result is that customers turn to additional outlets like twitter where they can interact with actual employees of the company and get actual usable information. Twitter is a horrible interface for this sort of thing and nearly impossible to log. The fact that customers are bypassing these "experts" and going to a worse medium to get the information they need says a lot about how badly "experts" are being handled by online marketers.
In short, the community asks more of Slashdot's editors to give us a real expert and not someone deemed "safe" by the marketing department. Oh, and thanks for sticking your neck out in an obviously charged conversation, good to have input from the slashdot employees here!
moox. for a new generation.
since some time no I've been gathering lots of Information about lot's of different stuff. Doing so has often brought me around various places on the net. I had something similar to this in mind kinda like a repository which contains the contact to some specialist or at least someone more knowlegdeable than me on a topic who posses the ability to relay his knowledge in realtime at anytime. If I were Slashdot.org I would be very careful not to think to small as this might be one of the enormusly needed tool for common advanced knowlegde Insuring 24/7 expert contact && response would be equal to a man build world wonder (if you don't start being one of the bad guys :p)
good luck with the new feature release
@returning to gather and clone knowlegde of any sort
That seems like such an obvious step to distill top-X questions. Note that I am only referring to the "we will chose top-X questions to ask someone", not to all /. articles.
... each server a need. They are not, nor should be, one and the same...
Check your premises.
Interesting. Do you have a citation? I'd not heard of that before.
GP, if you're reading this, your journal was the place for that, not here. And there is at least one JE about it right now. Mods, please mod the GP and everyone who responded to him (including me) offtopic. Thx.
Free Martian Whores!
The trouble with most ads is that they aren't just potentially annoying, they are also a security risk. The only time I ever picked up a virus, to my knowledge at least, I was browsing a couple of geek news sites I follow regularly. As usual, I started by opening up a whole bunch of tabs for stories that looked interesting, all of them on normally reputable sites. And then I got hit by a drive-by download, which turned out to be a Java zero-day exploit carried briefly by one of the third party ad networks used by one of those sites.
Since that day, while I will happily contribute to the geek news sites myself in return for enjoying what others contribute, there are simply no circumstances under which my ad-blocker and privacy plug-ins get turned off, any more than I would share my passwords or turn off my firewall.
I suggest if Slashdot wants to go down this path, it needs to be something more akin to Google's sponsored search results: something self-hosted rather than third-party and integrated into the main content but with a clear note that it's a sponsored item. Perhaps what they're talking about here isn't such a bad idea after all.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I seem to be losing my RSS feeds and other customization in my /. account. Is anyone else noticing this or just me? It happened twice today so far.
I also noticed Reddit is having problem right now. It must be a web site problem day. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
You make an excellent point here, and I agree with you. I do think that it will be very important for the sponsor's to ensure that the person they select to be their representative be actually knowledgeable on the topic at hand. I don't think that I as a developer here will be able to enforce that, and I'm not even sure that the sales people and executives can really force potential sponsor's to provide a liaison who is really an expert. That having been said, as I believe your comment bares out, sponsor's who do not provide a high quality liaison to the discussion will likely feel the effects rather quickly.
To be up front: we probably will not have everything squared away and perfect the first time, but if this concept does get some traction, we should get better over time, and its these types of frank conveersations between our readers and our staff (both editorial and engineering) that will help us get there.
Why does slashdot continue to make half-assed attempts at emulating modern sites like stackoverflow which do the job so much better? Why does it have a moderation system that pretends people actually care about the distinction between "interesting" and "insightful" yet doesn't allow the most basic feature of community moderation which is to trust ordinary users to both post and participate? Why does slashdot continue to limp along when by all rights it should have been put out to pasture a decade ago?
If we get sensible, honest answers like we get over at the MSDN forums, it should work. If not... well, no need to reiterate.
BTW would you *please* give us a user-controlled option to turn off /.'s styles entirely? I can't do it in the browser except on a page-by-page basis, and I can't read /. otherwise. (The stylesheet is messed up again so /. doesn't work at all anymore in a browser that doesn't know stylesheets in the first place.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
They recently messed up the stylesheet and the HTML that goes with it, so now slashdot no longer works in a textmode browser; I'd guess it's all the same problem, some poorly-tested twiddling in the back end somewhere.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Ugh. [sighs] I finally redid my customization. It better not go away again.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
What is the point to this change? Obviously, to generate additional income for /.
What is the benefit for the users? There's currently nothing stopping virtually anyone from creating an account and adding their 2 cents.
What is the benefit for the queries? Currently, the accepted questions are necessarily broad, to be of interest to more users. Is this change going to lead to a (few/lot/googolplex) more queries being accepted, or to the existing volume of published queries getting more actual expert responses (IAAL, IAAMD, IAAEE, IAADBA, etc)?
According to their most recent quarterly statement, Geeknet as a whole is still losing money, albeit at a much slower pace than last year. Their gross margins are up, and they seem to have kept operating expenses steady. I guess we'll see if the added "media revenue" gets them over the hump without unduly pissing off existing readers.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Why bother to use Ask Slashdot in the first place? The chance of getting your submission picked is practically next to nothing, which is a good thing in other ways, I don't want to be spammed with questions on my feed. Ask Slashdot question quality isn't that great anyway, too much of the time the question is regarding something legal (Thus any answer not from a lawyer is irrelevant), has bad assumptions, is flamebait, is too vague/generic/incomplete or any power/technical user/consumer should already know or know how to find out themselves.
Some people suspected that "Ask Slashdot" was just an infomercial designed to sell a product that just so happens satisfies the question. It didn't help that some of the questions were worded to have an obvious answer. Now the use of "sponsors" just adds to the skepticism.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
You're right, we should have invaded with help from the USSR and let them subjugate half of Japan for 50 years, killing 10 million people in the invasion. That would have been the ethical thing to do.
So whats wrong with the advertisers/sponsors responding? If its clear they are sponsors when they respond I fail to see an actual problem, if we can all still post what we want and we can mod them into oblivion and respond to the sponsors just like we always have, I really fail to see the problem.
I'm trying not to be paranoid these days.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Didn't read, I already know what you said. You are wrong and an apologist who does not understand trade-offs.
It's not that hard to explain, and understanding it shouldn't crush your moral outlook. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
The casualties, on both sides, would have been much much higher had Japan not surrendered rather quickly, not to mention the Soviets were going to bust in at any moment and we all know how friendly they were to conquered native populations. Between Japanese civilians being trained to fight to their last breath and the suicidal fanatic loyalty of the soldiers, there pretty much would have been widespread genocide (not intentional, but de facto) as a result of invasion of the mainland, leaving the entire country in utter ruin and the Japanese people pretty much wiped out. The atomic bombings saved countless lives because it showed the leadership that we could accomplish the same thing without spending too many of our own soldier's lives, and that it was better for them to just surrender sooner, rather than later, and just get it over with. It nearly didn't even happen, since the military attempted a coup to prevent the surrender. They were that crazy stupid, willing to die for nothing and doom the rest of their people along with them. Thankfully, saner heads prevailed and Japan is doing quite well now, instead of an uninhabited wasteland.
I should point out that the atomic bombings were relatively tame compared to some of the fire bombings we did elsewhere. Just because we did it with one bomb instead of thousands, that makes a big difference to some people, apparently. GP was right, you have a shallow understand of history.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
Q: How do I avoid this new, soon-to-be-corrupt, part of /.
A: add "127.0.0.1 ask.slashdot.org" to your hosts file
Q: Thanks, /. expert
A: Q?
--
Nothing endures; nothing is complete; nothing is perfect.
emphasize the greater question of humans killing humans by nuclear means
Why does it being nuclear matter? A corpse is a corpse, no matter if it got shot in the head, fell on a grenade, starved, got a disease, or was incinerated by an atom bomb. There is no honorable way of killing another human being. There is no way of killing that makes it any cleaner. There are ways to get it over quicker. Would a prolonged, drawn-out conflict where men bayonet each other in trenches or in cities before dying of malnutrition and dysentery is more humane?
To make things simpler, just imagine that those cities had a fatal disease which could kill millions: is it a valid trade-off to annihilate both?
Annihilate? Perhaps not, quarantine with military force, of course. Burn down a few blocks and kill the diseased? Yes. Regardless, you've oversimplified.
Patriotism is great and it's nice to see anyone loving his/her own homeland.
I don't even give a shit about maintaining the reputation of the US and I am a weeaboo idiot who looks at Japanese shit all day. Don't play that card.